Tuesday 19th May
I have a brief gardening chat with a neighbour and fellow dog walker while out and about this morning. The largest of local garden centres, Palmers, opens tomorrow after weeks of being closed under social distancing guidance. Sapcote Garden Centre, closer but smaller, opened last Wednesday, with, I am told, cars queuing to be allocated a parking space, which effectively maintained social distancing for customers once they entered the garden centre. My ale-appreciating friend who delivered bottles of beer to my doorstep yesterday, was on his way to Sapcote Garden Centre, and agreed to let me know how busy it is. I have heard nothing. He may still be in his car queuing at the entrance.
Working at home on a gloriously warm and sunny day, and I move my “office” into the garden, at least until a crop-sprayer starts operating in the field behind us, with just a fence between my laptop and the crop. No doubt the spray is harmless to humans, but my laptop is due for a battery charge anyway, and so I retire indoors for an hour or so. I hope that the spray is harmless, since the contractor must have had a lunch break, and when I return to the outdoor office, listening to classic FM on earphones, he creeps up behind me, spraying just a few metres from the fence.
I receive an e-mail from someone who complained about a cockerel before the implementation of lockdown. The cockerel is still crowing in the early hours despite the owner receiving a warning letter from me. The e-mail says that the sender understands the restrictions that social distancing places on us, but suggests that I put on PPE, and go and remove the cockerels. That is probably a perfectly reasonable request from someone who has been repeatedly woken and kept awake at 4am. I reply with what I hope is a suitably sympathetic and explanatory e-mail, and say that I will ensure that the case gets priority as soon we are able to install a specialist recorder to witness the problem directly.
A consultant contacts me about an application for flats against a Jazz Club, that also has an occasional side-line in heavy metal jamming sessions. The consultant wants to convince me that he can build a soundproof the party wall so that clubbers and flatmates can reside together in harmony. To date I have not been convinced, and have recommended that the application be refused. The consultant needs to measure noise levels in the club before specifying the wall details, but social distancing rules are keeping the club closed (and in any case the club owner has told me that he has no intention of co-operating with the applicant). I suggest that the applicant uses noise measurements that I have made elsewhere, in a particularly noisy city centre bar. In case of any doubt, I’d rather have the wall over-engineered. I await his response.
Walking around the quarry edge this evening I plan to sit on one of the rocky “outcrops” and enjoy some 
contemplation in the evening sunshine for a few minutes, but each is already occupied, and I find a grassy spot elsewhere to spend a while enjoying a different vista of local countryside. By the time that I return home the routes round Croft Hill and the quarry are busy with families exercising. No doubt normally some of these would be involved with football clubs, dance classes, Scouts or other social activities, parents dashing around as a taxi service. Social distancing must be both straining and strengthening family relationships.
A Zoom pub get together this evening with mates who would normally be joining me at the Heathcote Arms on a Tuesday night. I decide to sit in the “pub garden”, earlier designated the outdoor office, but as the sun went down, for some reason the Wi-Fi connection to the house becomes unreliable. As the others chat they get a virtual tour of my garden while I carry my laptop indoors to enjoy the rest of the evening closer to the router. It is a sign of how much we miss the natural conversation and banter that flows in the atmosphere of a real pub. At one stage we discussion the pork chops that someone had cooked for dinner. That conversation would never happen in the Heathcote Arms.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
